Article June 4, 1904 Issue

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The old idea of heaven as a place to be admitted to, and of hell as a place to shun, has largely given way in the minds of Christian believers to the better idea of heaven as signifying a heavenly condition and of hell as expressing the inner state of the sinner who persistently and flagrantly violates the laws of his being and disregards those divine precepts which are designed, through compliance with them, to make the life prosperous and happy. The Christian world is becoming more sane and more Christian as the centuries pass. This is evidenced in several ways and particularly by the changed views on the subject under consideration. The belief that this world is a miserable habitation for man, made so by the transgression of the first pair who entered upon this stage of existence, and that life here must be borne with as much patience and grace as human beings can muster while they anxiously look forward to another world where unending felicity shall be vouchsafed to them, is happily waning through the growing acceptance of the better and truer conviction that life in this world is a great and noble thing; that God made no mistake in ordaining the conditions of man's life here; that heaven and hell,—success and peace happiness, or defeat, unrest, and suffering,—are the experiences of men and women here according as they seek to know the real meaning of life, seek the truth and obey it, or follow low and selfish instincts and give no heed to God's commands as weitten in the human constitution and promulgated in the Scriptures.

The Universalist Leader.

Where is Galilee in the geography of your spiritual life and mine?

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